"Even in the deadliest calm, a storm brews beneath the surface, waiting for the moment to unleash its fury."

~ Anonymous

Chapter XII

(7 years ago)

Year 2047

Doc came over to his workout area a few times over the next few weeks, always keeping their interactions short. Slowly, they became friends. Yoki had a hard time trusting people after everything he’d been through, but he opened up to Doc a little bit about his life before Stonegate. He left out the part about his parents, though. He wasn’t quite ready to tell that story yet.

“Damn,” Doc said, whistling through his teeth. “Sounds like your life was pretty nice before all this. Nice house. Nice family. You got admitted to a special school by eagle messenger?”

“Yeah,” Yoki admitted. “I guess it was pretty nice.”

“Your dad trained you up. Really took the time to make sure you knew how to fight. That’s something I’d have appreciated when I was a kid. My dad never bothered to do that.”

“That so?” Yoki said. Doc had mentioned his family a few times, always just in passing. It seemed like a bit of a sore spot for him.

“Yeah. I never really knew my parents.”

His face went slack, as if he were remembering things he’d rather not, and he walked off. Yoki was starting to get a sense of Doc’s moods, and he knew he wouldn’t get any more information out of him that day.

And Doc loved information. He knew everything there was to know about everyone in Stonegate, and he dispensed those stories freely in the workout yard.

“You know what Maxwell’s deal is?” he whispered conspiratorially one day.

“No,” Yoki said.

“His brother.”

“What?”

“He didn’t commit the crimes he’s in for. Murder of some lady or something, I didn’t catch that part. His brother did it and framed him. And he got away with it. He’s a banker now. Living the high life while Maxwell’s stuck down here in Stonegate.”

“Tough luck.”

“I know,” Doc said. “So think about that whenever you see Maxwell. He knows he’s innocent. But there’s no way he’ll ever be able to prove it now.”

Yoki did think about that every time he saw Maxwell after that. It explained a little bit about him. He was such a jerk because he knew he didn’t deserve to be down here. He knew he’d been wronged, and he was bitter about it. And being in Stonegate changes who you are.

“Wolf next,” Doc said one day. “You know why he calls himself Wolf?”

“No idea.”

“He used to be a professional big game hunter. Went all over the world, hunting lions, tigers, whatever you can imagine.”

“Oh,” Yoki said. He hated big game hunters. Even savage lions deserved to live. They hadn’t done anything to anyone—they were just doing what was in their nature.

“But he became obsessed with one animal. A huge white wolf. He kept going all over the North—Russia, Norway, everywhere, trying to track it down. It could travel for miles, and it was extremely intelligent. He could never manage to shoot it. He got a little deranged about it.”

“Huh,” Yoki shivered. He could imagine Wolf getting that way.

“So one day, he goes out with the President of Russia himself. Not a nice guy, but Wolf’s talked him into letting him hunt in his private reserve as long as the President goes with him. They’re out in the frozen forest, middle of winter, and Wolf finally sees it. The white wolf. He takes it down with one shot, and he’s thrilled. Considers it his greatest achievement. But there’s a twist.”

“What’s the twist?” Yoki said.

“The President is pissed. As soon as he saw the wolf come out of the woods he fell in love with it. Not literally in love, of course, just thought it was beautiful. A credit to Russia. And now it was dead, and it was all Wolf’s fault. So he invented a crime so heinous that even I don’t know what it was. And he accused Wolf of it. And because he’s the President of Russia, everyone just took his word for it and declared him guilty. Now Wolf’s here.”

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“But he still calls himself Wolf.”

“Yeah,” Doc said, as if that should be obvious. “He still thinks killing that wolf’s the greatest thing he ever did.”

One day, Doc walked up to him with a sneaky smile on his face, as if he’d just learned some incredible gossip. “I just learned about Gavin,” he said.

“What did you learn?” Yoki asked. He’d grown to enjoy Doc’s stories, even though all of them were pretty depressing.

“So, Gavin’s kind of a drunk. Or he used to be.”

“Okay,” Yoki said. There was no alcohol inside Stonegate, so there was no way of knowing these things.

“Always a violent guy. Had a rough time growing up. Drank a lot. Like I said. One day, he’s in a bar. Gets into a fight with someone in there. I think the guy insulted his mother or something. Gavin totally loses it. He’s so drunk he doesn’t know what he’s even doing. Wakes up the next day lying on the barroom floor. And get this—everyone inside the bar is dead.”

“Oh,” Yoki said, feeling a little uncomfortable. This story reminded him a little bit of the incident with the cops.

“So Gavin’s secretly incredibly powerful. He just doesn’t know it. Or maybe he can only access that power when he’s been drinking. Down here, there’s no way of knowing which one it is.”

“Damn,” Yoki said, tossing another weight onto the stack he was lifting. He liked knowing all this information about his cellmates. It made him feel a little bit like he had the jump on them.

“Never forget,” Doc said. “Down here, information is key. The more you know about someone, the more you can predict what they’re going to do. And sometimes, knowing things has its rewards. You can use that information to get what you want.”

“Isn’t that a little unethical?”

“Isn’t stabbing someone in the neck with a prison shank a little unethical?” Doc laughed. “In Stonegate, you have to do what you can to survive. Otherwise, you’ll be the next one bleeding out in the infirmary.”

For all the information he volunteered about other prisoners, Doc never talked about his own life before Stonegate at all. Yoki asked about it a few times, but he always got evasive answers.

“It was another life,” Doc would say. Or: “None of that’s really relevant now.”

It made sense. Doc was always willing to use what he learned against other prisoners. Why would he give people anything that could be used against him? He and Yoki talked for months, on and off in the prison yard, and Yoki came to learn a lot about the other criminals on his block. He wasn’t yet sure what he’d do with what he’d learned, but he knew it would probably be useful someday.

But the only thing he learned about Doc in all that time was that he loved strawberries.

“That’s the one thing I miss about outside,” he said, looking up at the ceiling wistfully. “But not much else.”

Doc got quiet after that. You could see the gears turning in his brain, thinking about something way back. Yoki simply let Doc think and went back to weights. Starting again with 50% of his max, he began his squats. Putting on three 45-pound weights on each side of the bar, he started squatting again. The weights felt almost nonexistent for him, and he was sure he could squat more than his current max, but Stonegate only had so many weights. Even his max in squats felt like nothing; it was easy, simple, like eating cake. At first, it had been challenging, like someone was pushing down on his shoulders the whole time. Now, he hardly felt any push, perhaps someone pushing down with their pinky finger, but it was a cakewalk.

Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Yoki could feel the inmates’ gazes piercing through him. He could feel their emotions in their gazes. He was the threat of violence Armageddon. Squatting their max like it was nothing. You could practically feel their covetousness—envious of his athletic abilities, jealous over the fact he was so much more than them. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. Thirty-three. He was superior—that’s all there was to it. Yoki was the strongest one in prison, and everyone knew it.

Be careful of your naivety, boy, you’re letting this get to your head.

Damnit! After all his mental training, he still couldn’t block out Painkiller. “What do you want, Painkiller?” Yoki asked aloud, annoyed.

Before he got a reply, Doc grabbed his collar, lifting Yoki high into the air. “What did you just say, child?!”

“I-I-I. . .” Yoki couldn’t answer. He couldn’t breathe. Doc oozed an aura so strong, the other prisoners in the yard passed out. For the first time in a while, Yoki started sweating. He felt fear. Doc was strong, much more than Yoki.

“S-s-sorry, chief. I just. . . AHHHHH!” Doc dropped Yoki and began slapping his head. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Doc dropped to his knees, bowing to Yoki. “I’m sorry, Yoki, I l-l-lost my composure. Pl-pl-please f-f-forgive me.”

Strange, that’s all that came to mind. So sudden, so fast, things changed. Yoki thought he was the strongest when Doc was. But then Doc, for some reason, couldn’t do anything to Yoki. This was the first time he’d seen Doc lose his temper, and yet when he tried to get Yoki to tell him something, he went nuts. Talking to himself like someone was yelling at him to stop. . . could it be. . . no, it couldn’t mean. . . it was out of the question. But was it really? He mentioned Painkiller, and that’s when Doc lost it. Yet, who was it then telling Doc to stop? To apologize. It wasn’t like Doc to do this. It was showing weakness. He wasn’t the type of person to bow to someone. The sweat on Yoki’s brow turned ice cold. Doc had lifted him up with the weights. With a single hand. Even Yoki had a hard time comprehending it. Impossible—except it wasn’t.

Doc stood up, shaking. “I’ll talk to you s-s-soon. This won’t h-h-happen again. I am deeply s-s-sorry.”

Looking at Doc as he walked inside, he noticed that the prisoners were all awake as if nothing had happened. Yoki swore he saw them faint, yet they were acting as if nothing happened. They didn’t look at Doc or Yoki; they simply did their own thing. Not a single gaze lay upon Yoki, which was beyond unusual. They were always staring. They were always judging.

Putting the bar and weights back onto the rack, Yoki started to walk inside. Not a single person glanced at him as he walked. Looking back, Yoki noticed the grass all around the weight rack was shriveled, dead. The lifeless grass looked back into Yoki, deep into his soul. Yoki shuddered, wondering what exactly just happened.